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Canadian Checkers – How Does Canadian Differ to other Checkers Games?

Checkers is a game that has many variations across different regions of the world. One of these variants is Canadian checkers, which is you may have guessed is played mainly in Canada. Interestingly enough, there is a version of checkers that is played in Sri Lanka that uses the same sized board as Canadian checkers.

According to some accounts, what is now known as Canadian checkers was introduced to the country in the 19th century by a traveler who had seen the game played in Europe. The exact size of the board of this game is unknown.

Today numerous sites offer Canadian checkers online, and it is even possible to download free online Canadian checkers.

Rules of Canadian Checkers

Canadian Checkers is played on a 12x12 board, which comes out to 144 squares. The double corner is towards the right of each player.

Moves of the Regular Pieces

Each of the pieces is allowed to move towards each square to the left and to the right in only a forward direction as long as it is empty. Stopping on the first row of the opponent’s side of the board makes the piece a king.

The King’s Move

The king is allowed to move on all of the squares that are on the 2 diagonals on their path, as long as there are no pieces between them and the destination square.

Captures in Canadian Checkers

Each player should make the maximum number of captures in every turn. If there are options to capture 2 pieces with a piece and another option with 3 captures available, the player must take the option that will allow the capture of 3 pieces.

In Canadian Checkers, regular pieces are allowed to capture forward and backward, by jumping over one of their opponent’s pieces. The king on the other hand is allowed to capture an opponent’s piece if it is along the same diagonal path.

Winning Canadian Checkers

The winner of Canadian Checkers is the player that can block his or her opponent from making any more legal moves. A draw can result from both players agreeing to a draw, if the same position is reached 3 times, one player has 3 kings left against the other player’s 1, and each move has been played 16 times without any progress to the game.